


Reaching Out

by oneatatime



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: brief mentions of the fam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27397792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneatatime/pseuds/oneatatime
Summary: On one level she's prodding at him, working a thousand different angles, choosing this wording and that headtilt and that touch to his forearm to remind him of very specific instances from their shared pasts while he can't get away.On another level, she's just a bloody fool who's going to get herself punched, verbally and occasionally physically. Again, and again, and again, because she won't stay down, especially not with this particular issue. She can't afford to stop fighting him.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Reaching Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FictionPenned](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/gifts).



"There’s a part of you that can be reached," the Doctor says firmly. "Part of you that's just like me!" 

On one level she's prodding at him, working a thousand different angles, choosing this wording and that headtilt and that touch to his forearm to remind him of very specific instances from their shared pasts while he can't get away. 

On another level, she's just a bloody fool who's going to get herself punched, verbally and occasionally physically. Again, and again, and again, because she won't stay down, especially not with this particular issue. She can't afford to stop fighting him. 

(But oh, how she wants him to stop fighting _her_.) 

She's not sure this iteration of the Master even remembers Missy. Is he before, or after? Does it matter?

It's always funny, looking back through the lens of past selves, even when she's pretty sure she can actually trust the memories. She was a different person back then. What seemed important doesn't seem so much now, and the choices she made were sometimes incredibly stupid. Maybe if she'd paid more attention to him at the Academy. Maybe if she'd gone after him more often when he'd stomped off in a dark, pretentious fury. 

Maybe if she hadn't decorated the TARDIS with Wham! posters that one weekend after trying ham and jellybean soup. 

"You really should stop hanging around with humans so much. You're starting to talk in their clichés."

The Doctor taps his forearm again. He twitches. That's all he can do. He's covered in webbing, after all. The skin she can see beneath it looks angry and red. 

"I have the antidote around here somewhere."

"Oh, don't. None of that do-good nonsense." 

She grins at him. She's exhausted, but she can go for days, with that wild exhilaration bubbling up through her. 

"Tough." 

She's in control here, not him. 

***

They pick up the conversation again in Hobart. 1984. It's minus three or four hundred years in objective time. About six months in subjective time. 

The Doctor is fiercely nostalgic for Tegan every time she hears an Aussie accent.

"She'll be right, mate," says the ambulance officer to the red-haired woman on the ground near the Cat and Fiddle clock, and the red-haired woman on the ground clutches at her wrist. "Nothing we can't handle." 

There's a reassuring nature to ambulance officers, the Doctor thinks, in between holding a conversation with Graham about Ryan and the florist. When you see an ambulance officer (or 'ambo', as they say here), you know that you'll be _helped._

The Doctor likes that. 

She also likes that the red-haired woman on the ground has a possible broken leg and the smallest of burns on her wrist from the Tashveen invasion force. Nothing worse. 

"You and I are more similar than you think," the Master says from behind her. 

She manages not to jump, but only barely. "What were you saying about clichés?" 

The red-haired woman relaxes as the painkillers start to do their work, and then the two ambulance officers lift her into the back of the ambulance. 

Graham turns. "Oi, mate, push off. She's nothing like you." 

He's right. The Doctor inhales, drawing comfort from his humanity, from the fierceness in him. He'll always step up to help. Same as Yaz, same as Ryan. 

Graham's right. He's also fundamentally very wrong.

The Master's eyes say _aren't you bored with them yet?_ There's a faint hum coming from him. A psychic invitation, something that none of the humans in the vicinity would have any clue about. 

The Doctor's eyes say _oi, mate, push off._

***

The Master comes in and shoots. The dummy twists in mid air and drops to the rocks beneath, tiny. 

It wasn't her. Of course it wasn't. He would've been disappointed if it had been. 

"Very inelegant of you." 

"Oh, shut up and sit down," she says wearily. 

It's a giant cavern, stalactites and stalagmites, with a water analogue dripping somewhere off in the distance. There's an opening to the yellow and purple sky way up high. She suspects the lichen of rudimentary intelligence, but there's nothing humanlike, nothing bipedal, in the cavern apart from the two of them. 

He perches himself on a rock close by, and she can read in his posture that he's doing it purely because she asked. Because asking generally means that he won't do it, and so he's doing it to be contrary, and to show his 'superior intelligence'.

"Also because I know how important you think you are," he says, and there's that hum again from him, that echo behind the words, that says he's listening to what he can of her mind. She sighs, and reaches out to him.

…….contact.

It's always strange, with the Master. She can reach out to him in a way that she can't with anyone else, anywhere in the universes, anywhere in the timestream. She can trust him. The humans understand her, the humans are good for her, and she for them, they can share that overlap between them which enriches both. But the fact that she's thinking of all of the humans in her lives (and yes, OK, so not all of them were human) as "the humans" instead of by name, that just shows how nonhuman she is right now. 

She can go centuries without seeing him. She can't trust him to not kill her, but what's a little murder between friends?

He's the only person who has a chance of truly understanding everything that she is, everything that she was, for all that he gets so much wrong and takes the rest personally. Their claws are deep into each other. There are times when she turns over in bed, on the few times a year that she tries sleep, to feel his fingertips at the nape of her neck. So real it's almost like he's there. 

'Friends' is far too simple a word. 

He lets her see his current schemes. She's not sure if he wants praise, or if he wants her to roll her eyes and vow to stop him. Probably both. 

He sees her grief over the Andarrans from today's events, and her inability to stop the deaths. The hu- Ryan, Yaz, and Graham are back home today, and that's why she's here with the Master, yeah? That's the only reason? 

The Master huffs an amused, wordless huff, but he shifts closer, and there's a hand briefly on the nape of her neck.


End file.
